Never Die
by EllieMurasaki
Summary: Things that go bump in the night and things that kill things that go bump in the night? Everyday ordinary. Tacos? Terrifying. Lucky for Sam that he was already crazy. Mystery Spot coda.


Sam is terrified when he follows Dean out of the motel room. Doubly so when he sees Cal. "Drop the gun," he says calmly, knife at Cal's throat. Cal hasn't even raised the gun yet.

Cal might be nearly as scared as Sam is.

The gun isn't nearly so frightening when it's been kicked under a car twenty feet away. When Cal runs after it, Sam pops the trunk of the Impala (God, the mess in there, he'll have to do something about that), flinches away from the axe, grabs his own gun and levels it at Cal's back. He doesn't plan on firing it, but the other option is throwing the knife and that's just suicidally stupid.

"Sammy, you're starting to worry me," Dean says.

The gun in Sam's hand doesn't scare him. Most of what's in the trunk doesn't scare him. The gun in Cal's hand does.

Cal sees Sam's gun and this time he doesn't stop running.

Sam puts the gun in the trunk and the knife in the boot sheath, closes the trunk—nothing else will try to kill Dean, he's pretty sure—where are the keys? What the hell did he do with the keys?

The Impala starts. Which means somebody is trying to steal the Impala. Which means somebody dies now. _Nobody _is taking the Impala. It's all Sam has left of Dean.

But it's Dean in the driver's seat.

Sam sheathes his knife (again) and takes shotgun. It's been nine and a half months since he last rode shotgun. It'll probably (hopefully) be three months (at least) before the next time he doesn't. He doesn't stop shaking until they've crossed two county lines.

Somewhere in Georgia, Sam looks over and realizes Dean's steering left-handed, that Sam's thumb is tracing the pulse point on Dean's right wrist. Sam drops it instantly, hoping Dean hasn't noticed—last time Sam got laid was Tuesday sixty-seven on the premise that hey maybe it really was _Groundhog Day_ even if it was three-or-seventy days after Groundhog Day, and the reason it wasn't Tuesday sixty was it took that long to figure out the wrist thing—but Dean looks back. Well. Fuck. (Don't. Ever.)

Somewhere in South Carolina he realizes he's doing it again. He doesn't stop. Dean's heartbeat is more noticeable in its absence.

They're passing Charlotte, eleven hours from seven-thirty near Fort Lauderdale, when Dean suggests they stop for food and a motel. "Fuck no," Sam says. He already knows it's possible to do without food for weeks at a time without suffering any ill effect, so several more hours won't hurt them, and they've slept in the car before.

"You drive," Dean suggests.

"_Fuck _no," Sam repeats, and starts quoting statistics on car accident fatalities. If he gets behind the wheel, he'll run them into a tree. Or be run into by a semi.

Dean glances over. "What are the numbers on fatalities related to drivers falling asleep at the wheel?"

Doesn't matter. Didn't happen.

They're on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel when Sam's phone's clock ticks over to midnight. He's been holding his breath (Tuesday forty-five was a heart attack at eleven fifty-nine) and he lets it out in a whoosh. It's Thursday. It's _Thursday_. "Made it," he says. "We can stop now."

"What, here?"

This is the funniest thing Sam's ever heard. He needs to stop laughing, he really does (three and five and thirteen and sixteen would be hysterical if they'd happened to Tom or Daffy or Wile E, and telling Dean about them was twenty-nine), but it's all right. It's Thursday. Nobody's dying today.

They don't eat Mexican in Cape Charles. North of Wilmington, Sam turns the volume knob almost to zero so he can fiddle with one of the tapes while he watches Dean sleep. Come sunrise, he checks the volume and presses play: _"Lookin' at the sky 'cause it's gettin' me high, forget the hearse 'cause I'll never die,_" and Dean sits bolt upright because Sam's got it _loud_. "_I got nine lives, cat's eyes,_" Sam sings, grinning, and Dean flips him off and fixes the volume and flops back down.

The morning paper has an article on the back page about a sighting of the Jersey Devil near Hammonton. The same paper says authorities have yet to determine what sort of creature killed Marjorie Reed of Hammonton. Sam swears at his computer when he discovers what extraordinary luck people have had at not killing it, but there's probably something in the Impala that will bring it down. They just need to figure out what.

Dean doesn't have sausage for breakfast.


End file.
